Volkswagen AG, the company that ended 2016 as the world’s largest automaker, continues to show a lack of follow-through. Three months into the year, the Germans fell back to place three. It does not surprise that formerly largest automaker Toyota regained the leadership. The astonishing part is that a dark horse is in second place. With Mitsubishi under its belt, the Renault-Nissan Alliance has upset the top three, and even more surprising, it is nipping at the heels of #1 Toyota.

13.% ahead of the same quarter in 2016, the Alliance is the only contestant on the podium with double-digit gains. With 7.5% growth in the first quarter, Toyota has found back to its steady-as-she goes pace. Volkswagen has lost half a percent compared to Q1 2016. All this according to data release by the automakers...

I doubt CG would have thrown out this dig against TSLA if he thought its model 3 would soon reverse these results:

Renault-Nissan's Ghosn Asserts Leadership In EVs, And The Auto Industry

Renault-Nissan Alliance chairman Carlos Ghosn today threw down the gauntlet to the whole industry, asserting leadership both in the electric vehicle space as in the auto industry as a whole. Not only did Ghosn declare that “we are the worldwide leader of electric vehicles.” He also announced that the Alliance plans to be world’s largest car maker as early as mid-year.

“The Alliance is the worldwide leader in EVs with more than 460,000 EV sold up to today, which is twice as much as our immediate, and most media-driven competitor Tesla,” Ghosn pronounced today at the annual shareholder meeting of Renault in Paris. Ghosn serves also as the CEO of Renault.

“Our range of EVs is the most competitive on the market today, in terms of price and diversity of offer,”...

“The vehicle of the future will be an electric, connected, autonomous car,” Ghosn told his shareholders, leaving no doubt that he wants to lead that future...

CG is certainly sounding serious about alliance BEV plans (even getting another dig at TSLA in during a recent interview) but we're still waiting for the announcement of the next BEV introduction to follow the LEAF gen 2.

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The Race Is On For The New Mitsubishi Motors CEO

...Mitsubishi wants to go beyond the “low hanging fruit of common purchasing, logistics, and sales finance,” and share in the technologies and global production footprint of the Alliance.

A core part of the plan will be electric vehicles. “Mitsubishi and Nissan were first with pure EVs,” said Masuko. “We thought that EVs were promising, but the price was too big and the range was limited.”

With the scale and technological wherewithal of the Alliance, Mitsubishi wants to overcome these limitations. “We are going to have common platforms, motors, batteries, which will help reduce the cost,” Ghosn said. “You can expect the Alliance to continue being on a full offensive for EVs"....

Ghosn used today’s opportunity to re-assert the Alliance’s leadership in the EV space, and to put Tesla firmly in its place behind the global leader. Said Ghosn:

“The Alliance is the largest producer and seller of EVs. We were the first mass market developer of EVs. We were the first ones to go, and we have the largest product offer of EVs in the world. Tesla is second, and it is way behind.”...

Today, at 1:30 p.m. Tokyo time, a long-standing desire of Carlos Ghosn was fulfilled. Ghosn’s life work, the Renault-Nissan Group, can be called World’s Largest Automaker, for the first half of the year, at least. The man who had similar urges, Volkswagen’s Martin Winterkorn, now lives in infamy. His company became world’s largest last year, when Winterkorn was gone. At halftime, Volkswagen was back in #2.

Yesterday, the Renault-Nissan Alliance reported half-year sales of 5,268,079 units. A week earlier, Volkswagen said in its monthly global sales report that it delivered 5,155,600 units in the first six months. Today after lunch, Toyota published its 6 month sales and production results, and said it had sold 5,129,000 units January through June. Ghosn’s Renault-Nissan Alliance was king of the hill...

"Modern" union-busting doesn't sound quite as violent as when Henry Ford would regularly order company goons in to crack some heads, but Nissan still should be condemned for adopting the dirty tricks intimidation campaign described below:

Nissan attacked for one of 'nastiest anti-union campaigns' in modern US history

United Auto Workers official condemns company’s efforts to prevent employees from organizing as potentially historic vote approaches in Mississippi

...Nissan has responded with fierce opposition. The company has blitzed local TV with anti-union ads and stands accused of both threatening and bribing workers to vote no. It requires workers to regularly attend anti-union roundtable group meetings as well as one-on-one meetings with their direct supervisors, some of whom have worn “vote no” T-shirts to work.

The Republican governor, Phil Bryant, has also come out hard for Nissan. “If you want to take away your job, if you want to end manufacturing as we know it in Mississippi, just start expanding unions,” Bryant said last week.

Washad Catchings, a Nissan worker, said: “There is no atmosphere of free choice in the Canton plant, just fear, which is what Nissan intends.”...

FWIW, I heard an NPR hourly news story on this in the morning and it (along with many other sources) asserts that Nissan has 45 plants worldwide and only 3 aren't unionized, all of those are in the US.

^^^Also, in the NPR hourly news story from this morning I recall they also mentioned that currently, no foreign automaker in the US has a unionized US auto plant. (Many examples of this such as BMW, Toyota, Subaru, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, etc. Found a list at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_a ... ted_States.)

I know all about the Japanese manufacturers' hatred of unions. Having them actively fighting a current unionization campaign in the US is a step or two worse. I wonder if GM is going to improve the seats and other smaller things in the 2018 Bolt...

LeftieBiker wrote:I know all about the Japanese manufacturers' hatred of unions. Having them actively fighting a current unionization campaign in the US is a step or two worse

I don't know about hatred but when I took a tour of http://www.toyota-global.com/company/hi ... tsumi.html in late 2003, I recall the guides mentioning that auto workers are automatically in the union and they have to leave if they enter management. My memory is foggy since that was almost 14 years ago. I recall seeing on the line Gen 2 Prius, Camrys (I think), Lexus ES and some others.

Confederation of Japan Automobile Workers' Unions (JAW) was formed in 1972. It has a current membership of about 762,000, and serves as the confederated body for the labor unions of automobile manufacturers, parts makers, sales dealers, transportation companies, and other automobile related companies.

If you click on Organization on the left, items 1 and 2 have some more info, including # of members in each union (e.g. Toyota, Nissan, etc.)

The latter for Nissan says Federation of All Nissan and General Workers' Unions: 139,000 members.